The Wired Wilderness Project creates a structure for an artist-in-residency program in partnership with the scientific communities of the San Jose region. Creatively interpreting regional climate data generated by these existing institutions, artists’ projects will convey evolving issues of climate change, increase public awareness and potentially inspire behavioral change.

The framework for Wired Wilderness was developed by artists Freya Bardell and Brian Howe with ecological designer Brent Bucknum in partnership with U.C. Berkeley’s Blue Oak Ranch Reserve (BORR). The project is conceived as a 100 year commitment; distributing the project over generations will mass a woven collection of artist visions, utilizing a variety of seeing modes, sensing technologies, and calls-to-action in the context of climate change.

Coming in October 2012 is an artwork by Bardell and Howe based on their three year association with BORR. A multimedia installation within the Apron Display Cases of the Norman Mineta Memorial San Jose International Airport, the public will engage with real-time data streams coming from the Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, a 3,500 acre University of California field station in the hillsides outside San Jose.

Data will flow from research sites to the airport and a wide variety of sciences will inform this stream for subject relevancy and technological redundancy. Changes in climate will be documented in this two year study in the most technologically advanced means possible to the artists. High -Resolution Time-lapse photography, LIDAR, field recordings, sensor data, and satellite imagery will be collected over the two-year period. It is the artists hope that as you travel through the airport, the Wired Wilderness will serve as a reminder: that in the midst of our business and travels, nearby landscapes are telling a story of climate change; that signs often express themselves at unexpected and sometimes imperceptible time scales as a natural ‘clock’; and that through artistic interpretation of this often unseen climate data, we might better understand its impact and our role in this bigger picture.

Conversations are ongoing with scientific institutions to support ongoing realization of the residency.

Freya Bardell and Brian Howe are the founders and creative directors of Greenmeme, a cross-disciplinary public practice based in Los Angeles. The focus of Greenmeme is the design and creation of artistic environments and sculpture that encourage public stewardship and promote environmental and cultural awareness. Greenmeme installations have been featured nationally and internationally, shown in galleries, museums, vacant lots, rivers and oceans.Principal Investigator: Dr. Michael Hamilton, reserve director, UC Berkeley Blue Oak Ranch Reserve

City services and employees have moved from many locations all over the city to the new headquarters on 200 East Santa Clara Street. Designed by renowned architects Richard Meier & Partners, the new San José City Hall was thoughtfully planned to make it as simple as possible to access City services.

Climate change is a cumbersome concept to grasp for most individuals and communities around the world. Beginning in Silicon Valley, an innovative opportunity exists to educate the local and global community about climate change through a dynamic work of landmark public art called Climate Clock. The Climate Clock, which has a 100-year minimum scope of operations will take the complex data around climate change and represent it in a way that makes it easy to understand and thus relevant to individuals. The Climate Clock will weave San José’s culture of technological innovation with art and climate data; creating an iconic signature work of public art for Silicon Valley that will help to measure climate change, make the process more visible, and engage and inspire individuals to personally explore and modify their carbon footprints.

Established in 1991, Catharine Clark Gallery presents the work of contemporary artists. A wide range of media is represented ted in the gallery’s program with an emphasis on content-driven work that challenges both the traditional use of materials and formal aesthetics. Catharine Clark Gallery was the first San Francisco gallery to create a dedicated media room, presenting new genres and experimental video art with each changing exhibition. Exhibitions are hosted on a six-week schedule and generally feature one or two solo artist exhibitions in addition to media room installations. Additionally the gallery regularly participates in national and international art fairs.

A contemporary art gallery located next to SFMOMA in the Yerba Buena Arts District of San Francisco.

System Operations is a program of new works in video curated by Kenneth White for the Eli Ridgway Gallery in cooperation with the Zero1 Biennial. The program will run continuously during regular gallery hours from September 22 thru December 6, 2012 in the Project Space of the Eli Ridgway Gallery.

System Operations is a program of new video about systems: systems that we use, and systems that use us. The word “system” has accrued a diverse range of associations - constructive and destructive. It may denote order in a political, economic, ecological, or technological sense. “Operating systems” -- collections of software and hardware in the form of computers, phones, and tablets -- are ubiquitous. The newest “OS” promises improved efficiency, complexity, and control. “The System” is also something that may be fought against.

The artists in System Operations use video to explore the functions and dysfunctions of systems. Video is their means to participate, diagnose, and resist. Video is their tool for ambivalent declarations from inside and outside structures of prevailing notions of order. At the juncture of art and technology, the videos of System Operations aim to provoke new engagements with the systems and their operations that determine our histories, our present, and our possible futures.

Kenneth White is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University. His writing has appeared in Screen, Conveyor, and the Millennium Film Journal, among other periodicals and books. White's video programs at Eli Ridgway Gallery comprise his fourth curatorial collaboration with the gallery.

Location

Marcos Ramírez ERRE will create a series of wood structures that will represent the demographic distribution of ethnic groups in Silicon Valley and the surrounding area. This unique installation in which ERRE will present facts and statistics he has excavated from publicly available data will encourage viewers to reconsider their perceptions and beliefs regarding history, identity, race, culture, community, and belonging.

Project info:

August 17, 2012 - October 20, 2012Opening reception: Friday, September 14 at 7:00pmArtists talk: Saturday, September 15 at 10:00am Join us for coffee and an inspirational conversation with Marcos Ramirez ERREFree Admission

Marcos Ramirez ERRE

Born in Tijuana in 1961, Ramírez ERRE earned a law degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California before immigrating to the United States, where he worked as a carpenter for 17 years and began to make art. Describing his works simply as “constructions that accommodate ideas,” he frequently employs recognizable formats—traffic signs, eye charts, tourist bureau guideposts—to present unembellished and often unsettling information.

The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an energetic art space located in downtown San Jose dedicated to making contemporary art accessible and exciting to audiences of all ages and backgrounds.

From a low-rider rickshaw to work made by “Dreamers,” undocumented youth who are fighting to gain legal status, Chico and Chang examines the impact of Asian and Latino cultures on the changing face of California through sculpture, video, illustration and painting.

In our ever-changing society, the word “diversity” is more than a cliché. It is a call to action that is necessary for growth and adaptability. Results of the 2010 census show a continuing shift of California’s ethnic composition. Latinos and Asians have accounted for the majority of California’s population growth since 2000, a statistic that is accurately represented in San Jose. Immigrant communities directly impact the look and feel of our community, from our diverse residential neighborhoods to downtown businesses and restaurants.

Chico & Chang, originally curated in 2011 by Kevin B. Chen for Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, explores the interwoven and sometimes incongruous cultures of two of California’s largest populations, the Latino and Asian communities, through irreverent humor and inspiring candor. Posing complex questions about the assumption and construction of culture, the work in this exhibition provides opportunity to see where the boundaries of these two cultures begin, intersect and sometimes collide.

Location

The golden era of the arcades is long gone and the revival of the 90s a distant memory. It’s now up to the people to reclaim the space. The arcade was more than a place that devoured our allowances one quarter at a time, it was a place to play in public, to impress your friends, to socialize. The giant, sturdy pieces of brightly painted furniture enticingly covered with a smattering of eye-catching graphics sold us on the games before we played them. We watched the masters develop their skill quarter after quarter. The space was alive with interaction, community and conversation.

The Cooperative Gaming Coop looks both backwards and forwards, into the legacy of gaming on one hand and its possible future one the other. We have invited experts to curate video game cabinets, to bring together the best and most interesting work from a huge variety of sources, including local students, to share their games as well. The range of represented work will be enormous, expect to play games by people you have never heard of and people who will affect the future of the industry. We invite people of all ages to visit our “Game Coop”. Trade games, old games, new games, games you made. This is a space that we own as gamers. This is a place where we Share and Play together.

The Arcade is Dead. Long Live the Arcade.

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There will be a swap meet throughout the entire time that this work is shown. The audience can bring their own old video games that they no longer want and trade with others for their video games.

John Bruneau and James Morgan are internationally exhibiting new media artists, and have worked with games and game art collaborations for many years. Both are current faculty at SJSU, where they teach art classes in game studies, development and programming. Bruneau is one of the original founders of the Game Development Club at SJSU. Morgan provides expertise to SJSU’s Learning and Games Initiative. The Cooperative Gaming Coop is there most recent curation project in a dynamic series of Museum and Gallery shows focusing on games as art.

Location

Now and Forever is a virtual instantiation of a physical phenomenon, captured and manifested in a tangible object. Transposing relationships between sky and land, architecture and environment, the piece takes inspiration the myth of paradise that has defined silicon valley, first as a land of agricultural plenty, now as a land overflowing with innovation, intellect and start-up capital. It is a landscape of desire to be experienced one at a time.

As visitors grapple with the infinite incline of the piece, they will find themselves in unstable states of acceleration and deceleration. Engaging gravity’s pull, the piece will move visitors towards the horizon or away from it, but never in alignment with it.

Project info:

On view at the Natalie & James Thompson Gallery from
August 28 - September 21, 2012
Monday through Friday: 11am - 4pm
Tuesday: 6pm - 7:30pm

Nancy Nowacek

lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Nancy Nowacek is an artist whose work is rooted in the ecology of the everyday: the processes, codes, and habits of life. Her practice is focused on the uses of the body as relates to work, architecture and the practice of space. She has shown in New York, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Canada and Europe.

The Performance Art Institute (PAI) is a new and exciting multifaceted art space dedicated to performance art and issues that matter in our society and culture. At the core of our program is our artist-in-residence program, which is one of the first and only of its kind. Housing and showcasing new genre artists connected to performance, film, video, sound and avant-garde music, our artist-in-residence program focuses on the development and presentation of new work created in the freethinking and accessible atmosphere of PAI and San Francisco.

Creativity, innovation, and evolution are the hallmarks of the Silicon Valley, a world leader in technological breakthroughs that often bring progress and societal benefits. Silicon Valley is hub of invention, innovation and discovery where great ideas become greater realities. The Future Imagined: What’s Next? is an exhibition that will offer glimpses of uncharted territories in our, “new brave world.” That is changing in fundamental ways as we navigate in unchartered territories. Inspired by innovations all around the globe, invited artists will engage emergent technologies, to create new visions and imaginative objects for the future challenging us to experience the enigma called Silicon Valley in new terms. The Future Imagined salutes the invention and vitality that defines Silicon Valley and how it interfaces with industries such as genetics, MRI, energy, robotics, augmented reality, information design, architecture and urban design. The exhibition highlights the interplay between artists, technologists and scientists as they converge to artistically test the limits of what is possible in a technologically driven world.

The Future Imagined will feature interactive models, electronic objects multimedia digital video, augmented reality, sound installations, emerging forms and new genres installations. These works will seek to facilitate a fresh discourse about contemporary art in the Digital Age: One that is deeply rooted in the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit of the Silicon Valley.

Valley to Valley, is a collaboration of artists, art historians, and social scientists exploring the similarities and differences between the sister cities San José, California and Yekaterinburg, Russia. San Jose is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, which is world renown for innovation and technology. On the contrary, Titanium Valley is a technological area scheduled to break ground near Yekaterinburg.

Silicon Valley is located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Formerly the Valley of Hearts Delight, which was known primarily for agriculture and orchards. The area originally supplied the majority of produce and fruit to the surrounding area. Now the Valley is a global hub for innovative and cutting-edge technology.

Titanium Valley is the prospective home for large-scale industry project funded by the Russian government. Located near Salda in the URAL Federal District of Russia, the impending project aims to build up the regions economy by creating globally competitive products based around the high concentration of titanium in the area.

V2V is a research-based project aiming to align the similarities and differences between Silicon Valley and the prospective Titanium Valley. The project was shown at Innoprom 2012 and will be shown at both Zero1 Biennial in San José, California and the 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

This project is part of the 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial
September 13- October 22, 2012
Also on display at the TechShop San Jose
from Sept 12-16, 2012

Ars Virtua

lives and works in San Jose, CA

Ars Virtua is a self selecting collective of artists, educators, scientists, students and other interested parties. Ars Virtua was founded as an art space and new media center in the virtual environment of Second Life in late 2006. Ars Virtua has hosted and curated half a dozen exhibitions (physical and virtual), a conference, workshops and public presentations dealing with virtual spaces, art, democracy, resistance and the connection between digital and physical.